


Didn't you know?

by redradioflyer



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Angst, Getting Back Together, M/M, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-23 21:01:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17087675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redradioflyer/pseuds/redradioflyer
Summary: Tommy tries to break up with Alfred before he can fuck up and break his heart. He finds out the hard way that he's too late and he may have fucked up worse in his fit of self-loathing.





	Didn't you know?

Alfred hadn’t taken the break up well- Tommy just up and said “See ya later babe,” and expected that to be the end of it. For the first few days, he takes it… not well, but at least he makes it to work and manages to do his job.

But he calls in with the flu for the entire next week and stays home with a bottle of Jack to comfort himself.

Everything he and Tommy have ever done together is stuck on repeat- every moment, every kiss, every sweet word replaying over and over. He wonders where he went wrong, and he’s berating himself for all the things that he could’ve done differently. Attempting to drown out his thoughts, he turns his music louder, but he’s turned on mopey country songs about break-ups. They only make him cry even more.

Tommy is Alfred’s first real love, and he regrets that he never told the other man how he feels. Maybe he’d have stayed… or maybe he’d have run away even faster. Tommy didn’t seem like the type to want to be tied down, and Alfred thinks he must’ve been right in the assumption that keeping Tommy long term would be hard.

He downs another glass of whiskey and tries to get to his bedroom. Honestly, Alfred isn’t really prone to drinking his troubles away, and the way the alcohol rushes to his head to make him dizzy is unexpected. Stumbling into a side table, he knocks it over, and the super hero action figures that were displayed on the top scatter. He fumbles, stepping on a Superman figure. It hurts, and he yelps, falling onto his ass. He backs into the wall to lean against it and holds onto his foot. 

“Fuck,” he says. “Fuck fuck.” He looks down at the Superman figure and its limbs are broken off, its head is somewhere under the couch now. Even though he knows that it’s a figure that must be put together, and it’s likely that he’ll just have to hook them back in… there’s something his drunk mind finds incredibly depressing about it.

His ultimate hero is lying broken on the floor just like him. If he were sober, he’d wince at the clichéd dramatics of such a thought. As it were, he curls his arms tight around his legs, and he sobs against his knees.

That’s how Tommy finds him.

–

Tommy hadn’t wanted to break it off with Alfred. Far from it. He’d been miserable since, but Alfred’s a golden boy and Tommy’s… whatever the opposite of that is. A scoundrel? A cad? Well, it didn’t really matter, because what he is mostly is…

A terrible boyfriend.

Alfred deserved better. And hey, he’d told himself, the man isn’t in love with him yet, so he figured he should get out while the getting is still good. Sure, Tommy is more attached to Alfred than almost anyone he’d ever been out with, but he is used to heartache and loneliness. Alfred isn’t. So if Tommy could leave him before the other man was honestly attached, it’d save his little Chubs a lot more heartache later.

Or so he’d thought. When he gets the call from Matthew, he has to reevaluate that.

The normal calm, sweet Mattie is pissed, and it’s incredibly startling to encounter someone who’s so typically composed when they’ve become so enraged.

But enraged he is.

“What the fuck did you do to my brother?” Matthew demands before he can speak.

“Wait what? What’s up with—”

Matthew cuts him off and begins a tirade so passionate and angry that Tommy can’t get a word in edgewise. Tommy listens, stunned, at the outpouring of righteous rage from the normally quiet and sweet young man. The other ends with, “Good riddance to bad rubbish” before hanging up.

Tommy sits open mouthed for several long moments before he decides to go see what the hell is wrong with Alfred. He’s hoping, honestly, that it has nothing to do with him, but he gets the sinking feeling that he’d made a huge mistake in judgment. When he finds Alfred sobbing in a ball on his floor surrounded by action figure bits, Tommy knows that this goes way beyond mistake.

He has royally fucked up this time.

Hurrying to him, Tommy pulls the poor sobbing man into his arms.  The amount of empty liquor bottles around him tells him just how hard the other man is taking their recent break up. Guilt and shame are making him feel sick. At first Alfred leans in against him, but when he finally looks up and sees who it is, he begins to struggle against his hold.

“Lemme go,” he says and pushes at him. “Don’t touch me!”

Apparently Alfred is coming out into the exhausted side of drunk and crying because his attempts are weak. Tommy lifts him to his feet and brings him, still struggling weakly, to bed.

“What the fuck Alfred? This isn’t like you!”

“The fuck do you know,” Alfred says as he escapes from his arms and into his bed.

Tommy doesn’t respond to this, instead going to get the man a bottle of water. It takes a moment of coaxing for him to get the other to drink it, and there’s strained moment of silence as Alfred downs as much water as he can. When he finally looks back up at Tommy, his baby blue eyes are starting to leak again.

“What’s with the water works, porkchop?” Tommy asks softly, bringing a hand up to stroke his hair back. “I thought you’d be happy for your freedom from me and my wicked ways.”

It’s an honest statement from him- beyond Tommy’s own chronic affinity to fucking up in relationships with his bad behavior (not cheating, never cheating, but fighting, drinking, and the occasional drugs- none of which Alfred is real keen on), the two of them also had quite a few bad fights here and there. They always seem to make up, but Tommy had decided that Alfred was already at his wits end about it.

Not nearly as bad as this though. This is a million times worse.

Instead of responding, Alfred’s breath hitches, and more tears stream down his cheeks.

“This is how I’m supposed to act, big boy. Not you.” Tommy starts rubbing the tears away as they fall.

Although he means drinking and so forth, Alfred misunderstands. “Why would you be fucking upset?” he asks, face twisting with distaste. “You broke up with me.”

Tommy pauses at this and sighs.  The likelihood of Alfred remembering this when he finally gets sober is really low, but Tommy decides to try and explain himself regardless.

“Look, babe,” he says in a gentle tone, trying not to rile him up. “We’re a bad match and I’m a shithead. I figured it’d be easier for you in the long run to, ya know, go our separate ways before your heart got caught up in it.”

There’s a long moment where Alfred is clearly trying to process that.

“Before my heart got caught up?”

“Yeah, before you actually did something stupid– like fall in love with me.”

Sadness turns to anger on his face and he asks in a harsh tone, “Who the fuck told you I wasn’t in love with you?”

It takes a moment to realize that Alfred isn’t directing his rage at him- he actually looks like he’s ready to duke it out with whoever told Tommy that. So now it’s Tommy’s turn to be emotional.

“Well, it’s not a hard assumption to make, Alfred. You’ve never said you loved me. Not once!” Tommy’s feelings may be a bit stung about that, and it shows. “So don’t act like it was ~sooo~ obvious.”

Alfred frowns now and grabs him by the collar. “Don’t you dare turn this on me, buck-o. Why would I even be with you if I didn’t fucking love you, you fucking fucker?!” And then Alfred caresses his cheek and jaw with an unsteady yet gentle hand.

Even through the haze of drunkenness, Tommy can see the adoration in his eyes. Guilt is becoming a suffocating pain in his chest now, and he reaches up to hold onto his wrists gently. Of fucking course Alfred would think that way. Tommy has been in tons of throwaway, short relationships with people whose names he barely remembered, but Alfred… he’s different. He doesn’t date nearly as often and for him to be as constant as he had well… If only Tommy had a shred of smarts, he could’ve avoided this.

When he doesn’t answer, Alfred shakes him roughly. “Why’d you make me love you just to leave me?” He balls his hand into a fist and beats on Tommy’s chest. “Why, why, why?!” He punctuates each question with a blow.

Tommy knows he deserves it and lets the other retaliate. Finally he says, “If I knew… If I’d known… I never would’ve left.” Overcome now with his own emotion he grabs Alfred close and holds him tight. “We’ll fix it. We’ll fix this- fix us okay?”

And despite how Alfred hiccups as though he might cry again, he doesn’t.

“Just don’t leave,” Alfred says as he drags the other into bed to lie next to him. Tommy moves as directed and settles the other against his chest.

“Shhhh, I won’t. Just… just rest up pork chop.”

It doesn’t take much coaxing for Alfred to uneasily pass out against him. Later when Alfred suddenly awakes and has to dash to the bathroom while his system purges all the alcohol, Tommy is there, holding him and rubbing his back. This had happened many times before, but usually the roles are reversed. Afterwards, he helps Alfred back into bed, and he cleans up the remaining mess. Alfred is still awake when Tommy returns to bed, and instantly the other is wrapping around him.

“Thanks,” he croaks through a sore sounding throat. His eyes and nose are still red. “I’m sorry ‘bout that.”

Without speaking, Tommy just bundles him closer, and he strokes his hair. The expression of utter happiness on Alfred’s face as he snuggles in against his side hits him hard in the heart, and he thinks that perhaps he can be a good boyfriend if it’s for Alfred.

In the morning he’d try to fix things up, and he prays it’s not too late.


End file.
